Casting the Future from the Past
Worship Service - March 10, 2013
Foothills Unitarian Church
Sermon - Casting the Future from the Past
"Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also. Let us demand our own works, our own worship.Why, in an altered age, do we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson was 33 when these words sprang off the pages of his publication, Nature.
It was 1836, and he’d just left the Unitarian ministry, frustrated by what he felt was its over allegiance to tradition, and its unwillingness to adapt for a new age.
These 177 years later, the Unitarian church - in the form of the Unitarian Universalist Association - survives. And still we hear from some corners the same critique Emerson made to the church of his day who often struggle to find themselves at home in our Sunday services.
One of my peers in seminary - a young adult raised UU - described how she had spent her Sundays growing up in Children’s Chapel, and then in YRUU, experiencing all kinds of rituals and songs and emotionally engaged and personally relevant worship - and then she became an adult and found that the Sunday service of her home church looked an awful lot like the least updated Protestant service out there. Hymns that drag on. Intellectually distant sermons on topics that didn’t have much bearing on growing up today. Standing up and sitting down for no apparent reason. Responsive readings that could only be described as lifeless.
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? Why, in an altered age do we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers?
Rebecca Parker tells the story of when she first moved to California to become the President of our Unitarian Universalist seminary, the Starr King School for the Ministry. She says, “Truth be told, I was feeling proud of myself. Captain of my ship and master of my soul, I had valiantly charted my course to become first, a cellist, then a minister, and now an educator.”
She says when she first arrived, she had discovered a bunch of distant cousins who lived nearby, cousins she’d never met. These cousins decided that to welcome her, they should have a kind of family reunion at one of their homes.
On the day of the reunion, she pulled in the driveway, and read there the bumper stickers on the cars: “One said, ‘If you want peace, work for justice.’ Another, ‘Teachers do it with class.’ Another, ‘Live Music Is Best.’ And then there was one that said, ‘If you love Jesus, tithe.’”
Inside, she describes meeting each of her cousins one by one:
Here was Sally—a minister of religious education, and graduate of Pacific School of Religion. And here was Mike, a professional French horn player and high school music teacher. And Eldon, a seminary Dean. And, David, a United Methodist parish minister. Every single one of my distant cousins was a musician, or a minister, or a teacher—and several were all three! Not only that, the ministers were all liberal, social-activist types with an intellectual bent. And all the musicians were classical.
Apparently I had never made any choices at all! My life was given to me. I did not make myself. And this is how it is.
We receive who we are before we choose who we will become.”
Before seminary, I worked as the Director of an in-home care agency, where I oversaw 7 district offices. One of those offices, from the time we opened it until the time I left - really struggled. Last I checked in, it was still struggling. The first manager there, though she initially seemed trustworthy, quickly revealed herself as negative and even dishonest.
About two years into her employment, we let her go. It was a hard termination, I still remember how hurt she sounded.
Admittedly, by then, her three employees were equally negative, hard to work with, just plain grouchy - but we thought - let’s see how they do once they get a new manager.
You can guess, right? They never recovered, we had to let them go shortly thereafter.
And by then, that new manager had caught the bug, and we had to let her go too.
We decided to start from scratch.
I sent an especially strong and positive manager from another office to hire a new team - which she did, prioritizing employees with apparent positive attitudes, and references describing them as honest. Before long, we were feeling good, the office was meeting its goals, and the best improvement - everyone was nice...
But then, a year later, we were audited. And in the process of trying to prepare, we discovered that each of these positive, honest employees had taken up the practice of filing all their state required paperwork in the trunks of their cars. Boxes of paperwork. Just sitting there, because filing it for real would reveal that they were no where near those goals we had thought they had been blasting through.
Despite the fact that none of these employees had even met the prior employees, somehow they had taken up their same patterns.
As Rebecca Parker says: “Even when we do not directly know the people whose lives are linked with ours, our lives unfold in relationship to theirs.”
It is as if in the walls, these patterns we step into. In the air, the soil, the trees, and the stars. We are born into patterns we had no part in creating.
Whenever you walked into this church for the first time, you fell into the middle of a story already unfolding. There are traditions, and ways of working, and ways of interacting that are in this church’s DNA.
What are those things - or at least which of these things do we explicitly claim? Let’s look at some of your answers....
-----------------------------
Depending on when you arrived in Unitarian Universalism, or in this church, you might not think of all of these as traditional, but instead you might see them as revisions or updates to something even more traditional. That hymnal I read from - 1927 - there was nothing in any of the orders of service called a “chalice lighting,” for example….after all, we didn’t turn to the chalice as a meaningful symbol of our liberal faith until 1941.
If we were to look at each of our current practices and patterns - those we name here, and those that are so embedded we’d need outside eyes to know they existed - if we took all these and tried to trace them back through the ages - what would we discover we have repeated?
What have we reimagined? How are we a co-creation of what has come before, and how are we the beacon of truth for today?
One of the biggest surprises from my seminary experience was how much I came to love the bible, especially the Hebrew Bible. I was actually just one class short of getting a certificate in bible.
My appreciation for the bible - as a Unitarian Universalist - felt really confusing - what was wrong with me, I wondered? Was I not actually a UU afterall? Luckily before I had a full-on identity crisis, I took my first UU history course. And there I learned, that both Unitarians and Universalists started out loving the bible too. In fact they loved it so much and took it so seriously they could not abide by the non-biblical conclusions that the Church made in its positions on the trinity and predestination.
Yes, we have all fallen into relationship with biblical literalists. It’s true.
The further I went in my bible studies, however, the more I had to puzzle out what this text really meant to me, today.
Was I just reading it as literature? Like any other good dramatic text? Was I looking to it for truth? And if so, how so?
My bible professor would say - “what does this text tell us about God?” What did that question and others like it even mean for me? And why?
I came to think about these questions in a few different ways, one of them is like how Rebecca Parker concludes her story: that is, the bible shapes me. It shapes the culture I walk in. It shapes our laws, our value systems, our assumptions. It is one of the realities I was born into, especially knowing about our Unitarian Universalist biblical roots. I might not want it to. But that doesn’t change that it does. And so partly I was reading it so that I could really understand and be a part of the conversation.
And then just as much, I came to see the bible as a record of a people. The text, and the ways 2,000 years worth of people have read that text and thereby wrestled with life’s biggest questions: Why are we here? Why is so much of life hard? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why are people so terrible, and beautiful? How should we take care of each other - or should we? What happens when we die?
I came to understand the bible and the way I read the bible in the same way I have come to understand this category of “tradition” we’ve been exploring this morning - more generally.
It’s like - here is this record of generations, passed along across the centuries, person to person, community to community, interpreted and reinterpreted. And in my encounter with this text, I am encountering all these many centuries of readers asking these questions from their own time and place, the particulars of their age. And so I hold this tradition up in dynamic dialogue with the reality of today, and see what the creative interchange might help us understand and create for tomorrow. When we encounter elements of our tradition, we might first react in the ways of Ralph Waldo Emerson - with an impulse to throw out the old words and rhythms, and instead invent language and practices and forms wholly anew, for a new age dawns. People don’t speak with “thees” and “thous” any more, why are we singing them in church? And don’t even get me started on that doxology...
Emerson has had a powerful influence on us, playing on our liberal religious fascination with the new. You might notice that in the six Unitarian Universalist sources, none explicitly reference tradition, and definitely none reference the Unitarian and/or the Universalist tradition.
And yet, if we have ever had a realization like Rebecca Parker’s - I never made any choices at all! My life was given to me. Then we might do well to acknowledge there is no divorcing ourselves of our inheritance. It lives in us. It is not just one of our sources, it is our primary source. And so we might ask with a holy curiosity - what are the traditions of this church? What story am I stepping into? It’s a good question in other parts of life too by the way - when you are interviewing for a new job, when you are dating, or meeting your partner’s family, or joining a new social group - what story am I stepping into? What’s in the walls?
Because once we discover these stories - these struggles and patterns and practices - then all these can be - like the way I finally came to read the bible - a source of wisdom, a source of opportunity, a site for struggle, and a place for new and deeper understanding and richer faith. Received as a gift, we can begin to interpret these traditions consciously, intentionally, for today.
The critique made by my friend from seminary - that experience of stepping from growing up UU into our Sunday services - her voices and others like hers that remind us we need not simply “worship in dead forms,” are important, and worth listening to -
And we can set these yearnings of today in dialogue with our past, so that they can create an even more vibrant future.
As Rebecca Parker says - we receive who we are - and then we choose who we will become.
From these dry bones we animate new life, casting our great and possible future in relationship with our rich and reverberating past.
May it be so, and amen.
Worship Service - March 10, 2013
Foothills Unitarian Church
Sermon - Casting the Future from the Past
"Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? The sun shines today also. Let us demand our own works, our own worship.Why, in an altered age, do we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson was 33 when these words sprang off the pages of his publication, Nature.
It was 1836, and he’d just left the Unitarian ministry, frustrated by what he felt was its over allegiance to tradition, and its unwillingness to adapt for a new age.
These 177 years later, the Unitarian church - in the form of the Unitarian Universalist Association - survives. And still we hear from some corners the same critique Emerson made to the church of his day who often struggle to find themselves at home in our Sunday services.
One of my peers in seminary - a young adult raised UU - described how she had spent her Sundays growing up in Children’s Chapel, and then in YRUU, experiencing all kinds of rituals and songs and emotionally engaged and personally relevant worship - and then she became an adult and found that the Sunday service of her home church looked an awful lot like the least updated Protestant service out there. Hymns that drag on. Intellectually distant sermons on topics that didn’t have much bearing on growing up today. Standing up and sitting down for no apparent reason. Responsive readings that could only be described as lifeless.
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past? Why, in an altered age do we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers?
Rebecca Parker tells the story of when she first moved to California to become the President of our Unitarian Universalist seminary, the Starr King School for the Ministry. She says, “Truth be told, I was feeling proud of myself. Captain of my ship and master of my soul, I had valiantly charted my course to become first, a cellist, then a minister, and now an educator.”
She says when she first arrived, she had discovered a bunch of distant cousins who lived nearby, cousins she’d never met. These cousins decided that to welcome her, they should have a kind of family reunion at one of their homes.
On the day of the reunion, she pulled in the driveway, and read there the bumper stickers on the cars: “One said, ‘If you want peace, work for justice.’ Another, ‘Teachers do it with class.’ Another, ‘Live Music Is Best.’ And then there was one that said, ‘If you love Jesus, tithe.’”
Inside, she describes meeting each of her cousins one by one:
Here was Sally—a minister of religious education, and graduate of Pacific School of Religion. And here was Mike, a professional French horn player and high school music teacher. And Eldon, a seminary Dean. And, David, a United Methodist parish minister. Every single one of my distant cousins was a musician, or a minister, or a teacher—and several were all three! Not only that, the ministers were all liberal, social-activist types with an intellectual bent. And all the musicians were classical.
Apparently I had never made any choices at all! My life was given to me. I did not make myself. And this is how it is.
We receive who we are before we choose who we will become.”
Before seminary, I worked as the Director of an in-home care agency, where I oversaw 7 district offices. One of those offices, from the time we opened it until the time I left - really struggled. Last I checked in, it was still struggling. The first manager there, though she initially seemed trustworthy, quickly revealed herself as negative and even dishonest.
About two years into her employment, we let her go. It was a hard termination, I still remember how hurt she sounded.
Admittedly, by then, her three employees were equally negative, hard to work with, just plain grouchy - but we thought - let’s see how they do once they get a new manager.
You can guess, right? They never recovered, we had to let them go shortly thereafter.
And by then, that new manager had caught the bug, and we had to let her go too.
We decided to start from scratch.
I sent an especially strong and positive manager from another office to hire a new team - which she did, prioritizing employees with apparent positive attitudes, and references describing them as honest. Before long, we were feeling good, the office was meeting its goals, and the best improvement - everyone was nice...
But then, a year later, we were audited. And in the process of trying to prepare, we discovered that each of these positive, honest employees had taken up the practice of filing all their state required paperwork in the trunks of their cars. Boxes of paperwork. Just sitting there, because filing it for real would reveal that they were no where near those goals we had thought they had been blasting through.
Despite the fact that none of these employees had even met the prior employees, somehow they had taken up their same patterns.
As Rebecca Parker says: “Even when we do not directly know the people whose lives are linked with ours, our lives unfold in relationship to theirs.”
It is as if in the walls, these patterns we step into. In the air, the soil, the trees, and the stars. We are born into patterns we had no part in creating.
Whenever you walked into this church for the first time, you fell into the middle of a story already unfolding. There are traditions, and ways of working, and ways of interacting that are in this church’s DNA.
What are those things - or at least which of these things do we explicitly claim? Let’s look at some of your answers....
-----------------------------
Depending on when you arrived in Unitarian Universalism, or in this church, you might not think of all of these as traditional, but instead you might see them as revisions or updates to something even more traditional. That hymnal I read from - 1927 - there was nothing in any of the orders of service called a “chalice lighting,” for example….after all, we didn’t turn to the chalice as a meaningful symbol of our liberal faith until 1941.
If we were to look at each of our current practices and patterns - those we name here, and those that are so embedded we’d need outside eyes to know they existed - if we took all these and tried to trace them back through the ages - what would we discover we have repeated?
What have we reimagined? How are we a co-creation of what has come before, and how are we the beacon of truth for today?
One of the biggest surprises from my seminary experience was how much I came to love the bible, especially the Hebrew Bible. I was actually just one class short of getting a certificate in bible.
My appreciation for the bible - as a Unitarian Universalist - felt really confusing - what was wrong with me, I wondered? Was I not actually a UU afterall? Luckily before I had a full-on identity crisis, I took my first UU history course. And there I learned, that both Unitarians and Universalists started out loving the bible too. In fact they loved it so much and took it so seriously they could not abide by the non-biblical conclusions that the Church made in its positions on the trinity and predestination.
Yes, we have all fallen into relationship with biblical literalists. It’s true.
The further I went in my bible studies, however, the more I had to puzzle out what this text really meant to me, today.
Was I just reading it as literature? Like any other good dramatic text? Was I looking to it for truth? And if so, how so?
My bible professor would say - “what does this text tell us about God?” What did that question and others like it even mean for me? And why?
I came to think about these questions in a few different ways, one of them is like how Rebecca Parker concludes her story: that is, the bible shapes me. It shapes the culture I walk in. It shapes our laws, our value systems, our assumptions. It is one of the realities I was born into, especially knowing about our Unitarian Universalist biblical roots. I might not want it to. But that doesn’t change that it does. And so partly I was reading it so that I could really understand and be a part of the conversation.
And then just as much, I came to see the bible as a record of a people. The text, and the ways 2,000 years worth of people have read that text and thereby wrestled with life’s biggest questions: Why are we here? Why is so much of life hard? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why are people so terrible, and beautiful? How should we take care of each other - or should we? What happens when we die?
I came to understand the bible and the way I read the bible in the same way I have come to understand this category of “tradition” we’ve been exploring this morning - more generally.
It’s like - here is this record of generations, passed along across the centuries, person to person, community to community, interpreted and reinterpreted. And in my encounter with this text, I am encountering all these many centuries of readers asking these questions from their own time and place, the particulars of their age. And so I hold this tradition up in dynamic dialogue with the reality of today, and see what the creative interchange might help us understand and create for tomorrow. When we encounter elements of our tradition, we might first react in the ways of Ralph Waldo Emerson - with an impulse to throw out the old words and rhythms, and instead invent language and practices and forms wholly anew, for a new age dawns. People don’t speak with “thees” and “thous” any more, why are we singing them in church? And don’t even get me started on that doxology...
Emerson has had a powerful influence on us, playing on our liberal religious fascination with the new. You might notice that in the six Unitarian Universalist sources, none explicitly reference tradition, and definitely none reference the Unitarian and/or the Universalist tradition.
And yet, if we have ever had a realization like Rebecca Parker’s - I never made any choices at all! My life was given to me. Then we might do well to acknowledge there is no divorcing ourselves of our inheritance. It lives in us. It is not just one of our sources, it is our primary source. And so we might ask with a holy curiosity - what are the traditions of this church? What story am I stepping into? It’s a good question in other parts of life too by the way - when you are interviewing for a new job, when you are dating, or meeting your partner’s family, or joining a new social group - what story am I stepping into? What’s in the walls?
Because once we discover these stories - these struggles and patterns and practices - then all these can be - like the way I finally came to read the bible - a source of wisdom, a source of opportunity, a site for struggle, and a place for new and deeper understanding and richer faith. Received as a gift, we can begin to interpret these traditions consciously, intentionally, for today.
The critique made by my friend from seminary - that experience of stepping from growing up UU into our Sunday services - her voices and others like hers that remind us we need not simply “worship in dead forms,” are important, and worth listening to -
And we can set these yearnings of today in dialogue with our past, so that they can create an even more vibrant future.
As Rebecca Parker says - we receive who we are - and then we choose who we will become.
From these dry bones we animate new life, casting our great and possible future in relationship with our rich and reverberating past.
May it be so, and amen.